The Unconscious

One of Freud's central achievements was to demonstrate how unacceptable thoughts and feelings are repressed into the unconscious, from where they continue to exert a decisive influence over our lives. This volume contains a key statement about evidence for the unconscious, and how it works, as well as major essays on all the fundamentals of mental functioning. Freud explores how we are torn between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, how we often find ways both to express and to deny what we most fear, and why certain men need fetishes for their sexual satisfaction. His study of our most basic drives, and how they are transformed, brilliantly illuminates the nature of sadism, masochism, exhibitionism and voyeurism.

One of Freud's central achievements was to demonstrate how unacceptable thoughts and feelings are repressed into the unconscious, from where they continue to exert a decisive influence over our lives. This volume contains a key statement about evidence for the unconscious, and how it works, as well as major essays on all the fundamentals of mental functioning. Freud explores how we are torn between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, how we often find ways both to express and to deny what we most fear, and why certain men need fetishes for their sexual satisfaction. His study of our most basic drives, and how they are transformed, brilliantly illuminates the nature of sadism, masochism, exhibitionism and voyeurism.

A highly original first anthology on the cultural history of the unconscious that is destined to become definitive. “Know thyself”—the injunction that was once inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo—became a touchstone for classical and modern philosophers before being embraced as the endgame of psychoanalysis by Freud and his followers. The conceptual baggage that Freud took on his armchair journey into the unconscious mind is well known—and so, too, is the more recent science on implicit memory, blindsight and automatic processing—but the history of the unconscious beyond the consulting room and laboratory has largely been overlooked. From ancient dream theory to hypnosis, somnambulism to psychedelic mind-expansion, The Unconscious by Antonio Melechi traces the wider social and scientific history of the unconscious mind. It brings together a chorus of voices—including Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Mary Arnold-Forster, Swami Vivekananda, and Philip K. Dick, to name only some—to investigate the elusive psychology of memory and learning, instinct and imagination, creative breakthrough and mental breakdown. Moving beyond the familiar psychoanalytic framework, the book draws on a rich seam of sources, including case studies, psychological experiments, pulp fiction, urban legend, and commercial hype. Approaching the unconscious as a product of both discovery and invention, the anthology underscores its importance as a perennial source of debate, a tantalizing mirror to our hidden selves, and a powerful master key that continues to influence contemporary thought.

A highly original first anthology on the cultural history of the unconscious that is destined to become definitive. “Know thyself”—the injunction that was once inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo—became a touchstone for classical and modern philosophers before being embraced as the endgame of psychoanalysis by Freud and his followers. The conceptual baggage that Freud took on his armchair journey into the unconscious mind is well known—and so, too, is the more recent science on implicit memory, blindsight and automatic processing—but the history of the unconscious beyond the consulting room and laboratory has largely been overlooked. From ancient dream theory to hypnosis, somnambulism to psychedelic mind-expansion, The Unconscious by Antonio Melechi traces the wider social and scientific history of the unconscious mind. It brings together a chorus of voices—including Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Mary Arnold-Forster, Swami Vivekananda, and Philip K. Dick, to name only some—to investigate the elusive psychology of memory and learning, instinct and imagination, creative breakthrough and mental breakdown. Moving beyond the familiar psychoanalytic framework, the book draws on a rich seam of sources, including case studies, psychological experiments, pulp fiction, urban legend, and commercial hype. Approaching the unconscious as a product of both discovery and invention, the anthology underscores its importance as a perennial source of debate, a tantalizing mirror to our hidden selves, and a powerful master key that continues to influence contemporary thought.